Paris, 1 November 2011
Dear World Carshare Colleagues and others who may be interested,
We are currently updating the several sites and sources that together constitute the World Carshare Consortium (see below). It's about time. If you go to our
original program site in support of carsharing at www.worldcarshare.com, which first saw the light of day back in August 1999, you will see quite a cornucopia of information and sources, some of which still current and useful, and others of which starting to look a bit tired and needing either a major overhaul or quick trip to the trash basket.
One specific collaborative project that we have decided to launch in the closing days of 2011 that comes to mind is an updating of our World Carshare Operator Inventory, which the last time was brought up to date at the end of 2008 and in the process gave us all a good listing covering more than 500 identified carshare organisations worldwide. The concept of handling it as an open group project worked pretty well the last time, so we thought we might try it again. If you recall from the time, we eventually ended up with a master listing identifying no less than five hundred going carshare operations.Our previous master table was organized primarily by city, country, operator group, and technology. Here attached you have an example for Australian (clearly well out of date, but let's start with what we have). So here is how it works if you wish to get involved.
- Get in touch and let us know briefly which of these four categories you wish to help us to cover.
- We then send you the 2008 inventory for your category as an Excel table, which we would ask you to kindly update and compete.
- We will also open up the entire working table to you as a Google document reserved for collaborators at this point.
When the entire exercise is completed, we will then open it up to the students, non-profit groups, researchers, cities, public agencies, media, technology sources and others around the world who can benefit from this kind of comprehensive updated information.
That after all is our mission - to support and expand carsharing knowledge and practice worldwide. Carsharing - a great way to get around.
It will never be compete of course but it might be useful.
Please get back to us if you wish to land a hand.
With all good wishes/ Eric Britton
PS. And should you also wish to lend a hand with the costs of this exercise, well that would be great. The last time around we received a dozen or so contributions varying from $50 to $500, and that helped a lot. And it was also very encouraging. Otherwise we have to cover all these costs on our own and that somehow does not seem quite right.
Other World Carshare Consortium reference points that may be of use to you:
- Original website - www.worldcarshare.com
- WCC on Facebook- http://www.facebook.com/groups/worldcarshare/
- Carshare Café - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WorldCarshare
- World Streets on Carsharing - http://worldstreets.wordpress.com/category/carshare/
Posts
A great concept! I'm new to this but I can easily see that there are many potential reasons why this is a great idea. A few minutes enabled me to list these, I'm pretty certain there are many more reasons.
ReplyDeleteReduced vehicle numbers, leading to less land tied-up by car parking; reduced emissions of volatile hydrocarbons from vehicles; fewer resources used in making cars that aren't used; increased social cohesion through sharing; reducing unnecessary car trips; increased active transport - walking and cycling - and all the consequential benefits; reduced air-pollution and resulting deaths; reduced traffic-caused injuries and deaths; reduced traffic noise; shared running costs, meaning families have more disposable income.
Great initiative!
ReplyDeleteJust to be sure: the term "carsharing" is often used quite loosely to describe 2 or more people sitting in a car together. I assume your inventory will be restricted to the sharing of a car by different drivers right? In this sense, ride sharing and carpooling sites will not be included.
Could you confirm?
Thanks for that good comment. The fact is that the term "carsharing" in most parts of the planet refers to what you will find at http://worldcarshare.com. "Car sharing is an alternative system of car ownership, access and use. The costs and troubles of vehicle purchase, ownership and maintenance are transferred to a central group. One way or another you join a club and as a member have the right to take one of their cars and use it when and as you need it. Think of it in a first instance as a taxi that you drive yourself. As you will see here, there are many ways in which this can work, but in all cases the basic principle is the same" In Great Britain they speak of "car clubs" but outside of their green and sceptered isle, the rest of the world says carsharing and a few roughly similar variants.
ReplyDeleteBut your basic point is quite right. The inventory will concentrate on this sub-set of car use, and neither ride sharing or carpooling. Not to say that the basic idea of getting more people into each car is not an important one. It's just that we have a well defined population here and will be working with it.